Project Life Management Part 1- PLM101

I have been meaning to get around to trying something a little more intelligent in terms of my posts. Most of my posts generally do not have much structure to them. I tend to do them mostly on the fly. Well this is one that I have decided to try and take a bit more time to help you and others out there with dealing with Project Life Management.

Welcome to Life Management 101 (Written by someone who is also figuring out how to do this). This is going to be written from a project management stand point and take on some of the things that I learned while studying project management (Project Management Book of Knowledge will be referenced and remixed…. a lot).

Most of these topics sound the same, but they are not. Most of them are linked and in order to stop you from falling asleep to my dribble I will try and group them in a manner that is easily understandable.

Project (Life) Scope Management

Scope management is very important concept. It is something that needs to be closely monitored in our working lives. It is important because we need to give ourselves physical and non physical boundaries and live within the boundaries that we give ourselves. Of course life is quite malleable and is prone to change. There are people who studied English literature at university who are now working for NGOs in French speaking African countries, others studied law and are now farmers, while others still studied for the experience of going to university and making friends.

Now a quick side note, those who applied and went to university just for the “experience” are not serious. That’s a waste of money.

Anyway, the reasons why people are working where they are working after studying what they studied are many. Reasons, which I don’t have the energy or the time to try and explain.

The reason why (life) scope management is important is because it helps reduce (life) scope creep. (Life) Scope creep is when you find yourself doing something that wasn’t in your scope.

Plan: Go to the supermarket, buy some groceries, pay rent and then head home.

What happens: Go to friend’s house; have a few beers watching football, wake up in another town.

Now the above example sounds farfetched but stranger things have happened to people on their way to the supermarket. The above example is probably very much on the micro scale of life. That is just a day to day event that could have occurred. Imagine on the larger scale some of the things we end up doing that were NOT in our plan. Now according to the PMBOK 5th Edition, there are 11 tools and techniques to help us avoid scope creep. I am only going to mention a few of them and some life explainations.

Benchmarking – you have to have an idea of what your plan is, what you want to achieve and what you feel is acceptable. Even if it’s a little vague, you have to have some sort of plan. (I plan on being the funniest drunk guy in the local bar… all the time, I plan on reading every book in the local library, I plan on memorising all of the 10 hit kombos for Scorpion in Mortal Kombat on the PS3 that I find on YouTube)

Benchmarking

Observations – In life sometimes all we need to do is stop and watch what is going on around us. It’s not complicated. Just stop and observe for a minute. You may want to be the funniest drunk guy in the local bar all the time, but that may stop you from also memorising all of the 10 hit kombos for Scorpion in Mortal Kombat on the PS3 that you find on YouTube. You can’t do everything.

Observations

Questionnaires and Surveys – Now none of us have time to design, distribute, collect and collate questionnaires and surveys unless it is for school. In the real world that stuff is done by robots. Funnily we design, distribute, collect and collate questionnaires and surveys every day. We just don’t realise it. Every time we ask for someone’s opinion, it could be seen as a survey. We just need to be sure to ask a wide range of people for their opinions. It’s free and you don’t have to take the advice/opinions given!

Questionannaires

Group decision making techniques – This is easy. Remember the last failed trip to the casino you didn’t go on with your boy? Remember the failed braai (BBQ) that you planned at the local bar? Well maybe it was because of the lack of group decision making. Scope creep can be controlled if the group has the same vision. If the vision is not the same you will never organise the braai at the local bar.

The macro aspects of (life) scope management are a little more difficult to manage because some of them require certain things to happen in order for the next even to become available (life is sometimes like a video game. You need to unlock shit to get to the next stage). A simple example is: If your crush only wants a dude who can take care of her and buy her expensive fake nails and a semi permanent pen to colour in her lack of eyebrows, but you didn’t try harder at school so you got a shit job. Well you may need to get your ass into some sort of college or lower your benchmark.

And finally in conclusion

Remember than life is not about limiting yourself. As much as you need to control your own life scope, you need to believe that anything is possible. I mean the American’s made us believe that they made it to the moon and then stuck a flag that started waving in the lunar wind. A lot of people believe they made it there but no one asks why they haven’t been back since. If you believe that you can memorise all of the 10 hit kombos for Scorpion in Mortal Kombat on the PS3 that you find on YouTube, do that. Don’t then try and learn Sub-Zero’s 10 hit kombos at the same time. Keep that life scope managed.